Horse Slaughter Thriving

Well over 100,000 of our American Horses per year are exported to Canada and Mexico to be slaughtered for their meat and sold as a delicacy overseas. In 2010 the EU is instating new rules relating to the food safety of horse meat. Horse meat contains unhealthy amounts of drugs that we give to our horses, like phenylbutazone (bute or PBZ). Recently Canada has responded with new rules for horse meat export to the EU in regards to these carcinogenic substances. A rise in export to Mexico is expected, where the slaughter procedures are possibly even more inhumane then Canada.

Horse slaughter is NOT euthanasia. The journey in a fully crammed truck, may take several days without food or water. Many are horrifically injured and even dead upon arrival at the slaughter plant.  The abuse these horses suffer at the hands of both the kill buyers and the slaughter workers is so horrific, that footage or pictures of this intentional cruelty are generally too shocking for the majority of the American public.    

The fact that the horse has an acute and high sense of fear attributes to the inevitable cruelty of horse slaughter. Studies show that the horse will move at the exact moment that the bolt is about to hit him in the head, making it near impossible for the worker to render the horse unconscious the first time. The bolt ends up in their eye or cheek and many videos prove that horses have to be hit approximately 5 to 10 times before they go down, even in the U.S.  

Many of these horses were someone’s pet once and many are horses who have fulfilled a service all of their lives (like “retired” dude ranch horses, race horses, performance horses, work horses, kid horses etc.). In addition to those sad circumstances, many more are horses that were bred; just to be discarded because their color or conformation did not turn out as the breeder had hoped.

Many of these are also wild horses who have been rounded up by the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) or by the Forest Service. While there were still over 1,000,000 wild horses only decades ago, there are now approximately only 30,000 left in the wild in America. It is more than puzzling why our government continues to see the need to spend our tax dollars on rounding up more and more every week, just to have to spend more tax dollars on expensive adoption programs, keeping them in holding facilities and feeding them. 

Why does all this still go on when the vast majority (over 70%) of people feel this is not an acceptable way to treat an intelligent, sensitive and kind animal such as the horse? (Documented by thousands and thousands of petition signatures and census statistics and survey after survey.)

The sad truth is that both the horse slaughter industry as well as the horse breeding industries stand to loose a lot of money with the end of horse slaughter. The business of Horse slaughter is a FOR-profit, demand-driven business, like any other business. The amount of horses slaughtered per year, is determined by the demand of horse meat abroad and by the contracts that the kill buyers have to fulfill, NOT by the amount of unwanted horses. The demand of the horse slaughter plants is for healthy, muscled, young flesh as this is the tenderest and fetches the highest price per pound.

While we are certainly going through harsh economic times, and nobody denies that we have an overpopulation problem either big or small, when you stop to consider the facts more realistically, it becomes clear that horse slaughter is the anti-solution to the problem. The truth is that the abandoned and starving horses are not the ones that end up in the slaughter plants in the first place, for the simple fact that their owners chose to abandon them rather than send them to slaughter.

In addition to the obvious motives of the slaughter industry, the option of horse slaughter in itself in fact has created, is creating and will continue to create an overpopulation problem, by enabling over breeding (lottery breeding) and encouraging a quick turn around and dumping of horses that are less than spectacular.  

A non- horse person might be surprised to learn that the breeding farms receive both huge breeding incentives from their perspective breeding associations as well as huge tax advantages and write-offs from the IRS. This further encourages breeding strategies that are not consistent with demand. These industries continue to promote breeding in large numbers, even while the demand for these horses does not exist! When you throw in the current state of the economy on top of the overpopulation problem and add in the breeding plans for coming years, the future seems rather bleak for American horses.

It is an outrage for our government to allow breeding incentives, while never having made any moneys available for horse rescues and sanctuaries. It is also an outrage for our government to condone the actions of the B.L.M. and the Forest Service. Some say it is a conspiracy against horses and a betrayal of the American Public. 

What is needed is a proposition and a bill that proposes something like this: to take these same taxes from the horse races and other horse sports, and perhaps also from breeding fees, and utilize them to establish gelding funds and humane euthanasia funds, as apposed to breeding incentives.

We gain nothing by it. Horse slaughter plants are foreign owned and profits go abroad. Every argument for preserving the barbaric practice of horse slaughter, is greed motivated, un-factual and clearly deceptive. Horse slaughter is beyond un-necessary. It is time to stand up for the humane treatment of horses, and find real solutions to our problems without compromising our humanity.     

Click here to find out what you can do.  (Please link to http://www.respect4horses.com/getinvolved.html)

Written by Simone Netherlands. www.respect4horses.com  Copyright © 2009 Respect 4 horses.  All rights reserved.